Monthly Archives: November 2016

Whenever a politician adopts a policy the Fundamentalists, like Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson, disagree with and some disaster befalls (or doesn’t), those Fundamentalist Pentebabblers are quick to call it the judgment of God.

I wonder why the Pat Robertson’s of the world haven’t said the Gatlinburg fires and Athens tornado were God’s judgment on TN for its voting Trump…

See they hypocrisy? It’s both pronounced and unutterable. And proves that there’s nothing Christian about these fundamentalist pentebabblers. No, they are political ideologues, and nothing more.

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Hearing the very sad news that the Rev Prof. Duncan Forrester, Emeritus Professor at New College, Edinburgh has died. He was a fine theologian, and a very gracious man. He was the founder of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues in Edinburgh, in which I had my first academic job, and he preached at my induction to the Old Kirk of Edinburgh.

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Local junior higher Bobby Reinke reported Wednesday that he is still attending both “big church” and youth group in an attempt to begin some kind of personal relationship with “cute” fellow eighth grader Jenny Wilson. Reinke, sitting with his parents Sunday, also came out staunchly in opposition to cold, dead religion that demands people just attend church in order to fulfill “some kind of religious checklist.”

Their name is Legion. They come to date, they date, they break up, and they depart. As John says, ‘They were not of us for if they had been of us they would have remained with us’.

“It’s not about religion—it’s about a personal relationship with Jenny,” Reinke said piously as he craned to get a better look at the back of Wilson’s head a few pews in front of him. “I’m not here to just go through the motions. I really want to get to know her and see what she has for my future,” he added. Reinke further stated he fully intends to ask Wilson to add him to Snapchat, sometime in the next three to four months.

An underwater survey conducted by divers off Tel Dor, on the Mediterranean Sea, yielded an astonishing find: a rare Roman inscription mentioning the province of Judea – and the name of a previously unknown Roman governor, who ruled the province shortly before the Bar-Kochba Revolt. Historians had thought that based on Roman records, the leaders Rome imposed on its provinces were all known.

The rock with the 1,900-year-old inscription was exposed by a storm on the seabed at a depth of just 1.5 meters in the bay of Dor. The town had been a thriving port in Roman times that even minted its own coins, which proudly proclaimed the city to be “Ruler of the Seas”.
Found by Haifa University archaeologists surveying the remains of the ancient Roman harbor at Dor in January 2016, the rock, 70 by 80 centimeters in size, was partly covered in sea creatures when it was found.

Biblical Aramaic: A Reader & Handbook is a “one-stop shop” for anyone who is studying Biblical Aramaic or seeking to retain the knowledge they have already acquired. A wonderful resource for both professors and students, Biblical Aramaic: A Reader & Handbook effectively empowers students to be able to read the Bible’s Aramaic texts with comprehension, ease, and enjoyment, and to sustain a solid, lasting command of the language long after their formal study has ended. Split into two main sections—a Reader and word lists—this is an essential tool for anyone who wants to read the Aramaic portions of the Bible with understanding and confidence, and to maintain this ability over the long term.

Created by a team of scholars: Donald R. Vance (PhD), George Athas (PhD), Yael Avrahami (PhD), and Jonathan G. Kline (PhD).

My first thought was ‘if someone has a copy of Hendrickson’s BHS Reader’s Edition (which contains as well all the Aramaic passages in the Hebrew Bible), what will this stand alone Aramaic reader provide that it doesn’t contain?’ The answer- much indeed.

First, and probably most importantly, the notes intended to aid readers are in many instances more complete than in the BHS edition. The grammar of the Aramaic texts is offered without the (admittedly) sometimes confusing ‘encoding’ of the BHS counterpart.

Second, the limited nature of the Aramaic texts in the Old Testament allow the editors to provide a really fantastic supplement to what we find in the traditional ‘Aramaic Grammar’. Indeed- the biblical text takes up barely 60 pages whilst the grammatical material extends from page 61 through page 233. This volume, then, is the ideal text for a course introducing Aramaic to students familiar and competent in Hebrew. It does not, however, take the place of a traditional Grammar but it brilliantly supplements such a volume.

Finally, whereas such volumes tend to normally be cursed with tiny print and tinier notes, this is a volume people outside of their teens will be able to see with ease and enjoy and, further, profit from enjoying. The font is really lovely and the paper is thick enough so that there isn’t any annoying bleed through. The entire presentation is crisp.

I recommend it without hesitation to those looking for a reader’s aid for Biblical Aramaic. The editors are to be congratulated for a very useful tool and the publisher is to be thanked for bringing to us a work which will undoubtedly find its way to many classrooms and studies.

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As Christmas season arrives, Christians across America have begun intense preparations to withstand the vicious attacks they expect to face during the month of December as coworkers, store employees, and even random passerby ruthlessly wish them “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” according to reports.

“It’s brutal,” complains Dave Coleman, who has celebrated Christmas his entire life. “People I don’t know, who may not even believe in Jesus, think they can just insult me in the street by invoking an all-encompassing phrase that acknowledges multiple faith traditions? How is that freedom of religion?”

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But that’s not theology, it’s heresy. It isn’t exposition, it’s eisegesis. Ya gotta love the guys who think that their navel gazing expositions and ‘reframings’ have merit and the publishers who pander to them simply because they address the latest societal buzzwords. Toss LGBTQ into any title or subtitle and the substance of your research can be utter nonsense and Westminster will still publish it.

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Some of the post-2002 DSS-like fragments have polluted the DSS and Qumran modules in Accordance both on a corpus and manuscript level. This also has major statistical implications. In the following list I have listed all the post-2002 fragments that have made it into Accordance. I strongly recommend that they should be removed as they corrupt the dataset.

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Tchividjian’s remarriage was first confirmed in a Facebook post on Saturday by his new wife, Stacie, as she highlighted a sermon he delivered at the non-denominational Spring Hills Community Church in Santa Rosa, California.

“What an honor it was to be invited to Spring Hills Community Church and sincerely welcomed by such a loving staff and congregation! Our time in Santa Rosa was too short, but SO wonderful … Tullian Tchividjian (my amazing Hubby!) delivered an authentic, powerful message,” she wrote in part.

While he did not comment on his remarriage, Tchividjian highlighted the same sermon on his Facebook page on Saturday about an hour after his new wife posted it.

He’s a false teacher. He is, in his essence, Donald Trump- a con man who deceives and manipulates in order to advance his own agenda.

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If you’re involved in biblical studies then you are aware that thousands of scholars are still catching up on sleep and icing knees due to all the activity of last week’s annual conferences in San Antonio, TX. People from various corners of the earth and of diverse theological stripes gathered for up to seven days straight to discuss their work, catch up with colleagues, buy books, and eat their year’s worth of tacos on the Riverwalk.

I have posted previously about the Septuagint Studies session held at ETS in 2015, which was subsequently granted consultation status for 2016-2018. We had our first session this year (see here), which I had the unexpected pleasure of moderating. Considering how well it went, I wanted to take the time to highlight it one last time.

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Even though far more Catholics shopped online than in churches on Black Friday weekend, they are apparently not done yet.

A new EOTT survey released Sunday estimates that some 67-million Roman Catholics will shop online for their remission of temporal punishment in purgatory due for sins after absolution on Cyber Monday. That’s up only slightly from last year’s 65-million shoppers.

With Walmart and Amazon recently entering the Cyber Monday indulgence “game,” the Church is now offering heavy discounts as well, not only online but, more crucially, in churches. That move, which reflects how penitents shopped for forgiveness in 2016, is also meant to lower the stress of the Vatican website, which last year buckled under the intense eSpiritual-commerce pressure that naturally comes with Cyber Monday.

The evidence of the migration of “church shopping” to eSpiritual-commerce is incontrovertible: Eternal Fortune Magazine told EOTT on Sunday that eSpiritual-commerce sales between Thanksgiving and Saturday rose 13.7% to top $6.1 billion in new indulgences.

“The brick-and-mortar churches have made a big leap with their online efforts this year,” USCCB analyst Devin Thomas told EOTT yesterday. “They’re starting to get it. The USCCB says 63% of Black Friday indulgences placed on their website came from mobile devices…something we believe shows Catholics are growing more comfortable with pushing the “forgive me” button on smartphones.

Glory! He really is a Pope for all the uncommitted (and those planning to stay that way!)